


April First at the A.B.C. Press

by astrid_fischer



Series: 'le révolutionnaire', an a.b.c. press publication [10]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Newspaper AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 08:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1421707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/pseuds/astrid_fischer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Enjolras manages to play an April Fools' joke on everyone without really meaning to, there is a mild amount of panic, and it's someone's birthday (but keep it quiet, will you?).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. April First at the A.B.C. Press

**Author's Note:**

> still workin' on shlepping everything over from tumblr! this was actually posted LAST year on april first, and here i am just now getting it put up...GO ME! keep bearing with me, i loves ya, smooches, etc. etc. etc.

When Eponine gets the text at nine o’clock the morning of April first, she’s in the middle of tugging on her boots. She leans over to grab her vibrating phone from the bedside table and flips it open to read the message.

[text] FEARLESS LEADER: _You all get the day off. See you Tuesday._

Eponine rolls her eyes. This has to be the feeblest attempt at an April Fools’ joke since the time three years ago when Courfeyrac tried to convince them all that the world outside the press office had ended—and he got extra points for that because he’d actually taken a lot of time putting together his post-apocalyptic outfit, complete with combat boots, eyeliner, and a bandana.

There’s more chance of the world ending than of Enjolras voluntarily missing work.

 _Nice try,_ she texts Enjolras back, and finishes doing up the laces of her boots. She shrugs on Montparnasse’s leather jacket because she can’t find her own.

He’s still sleeping, wound up in her sheets, turned away from her so that she can see medieval Paris mapped across his shoulder blades in black ink. His hair is a silky dark mess and his shirt is folded neatly over the back of the threadbare armchair by the window.

“Be out of my bed before I get back,” she says over one shoulder as she gets to her feet.

Half-empty perfume bottles (all stolen, except for Marc Jacobs ‘Daisy,’ Cosette’s own perfume, which the blonde girl had bought Eponine for her last birthday after she’d said she liked it) and nail polishes clink together on her vanity as she shifts them aside in search of her wallet.

“Or what?” Montparnasse’s voice drifts over to her, smoke-silky and half-asleep.

Eponine unearths her wallet at the bottom of her underwear drawer and stuffs it into her back pocket as she crosses the room to push open the window.

“There is no or,” she tells him, and ducks out onto the fire escape.

*****

When Bahorel arrives at number 5, Blvd. St. Michel, it’s to find Eponine sitting on the stairs with long stockinged legs stretched out in front of her, wearing dark glasses against the early-morning sun and lighting a fresh cigarette.

He groans and nudges one of her feet with his boot. “Don’t tell me Pulitzer decided to enforce the no-smoking-in-the-press rule again?”

“Probably,” she says, pushing the glasses up on top of her head so she can squint up at him. “But that’s not why I’m out here. The door’s locked.”

“What?”

“Enjolras isn’t here.”

Bahorel digs out his phone so he can read the time off the scratched screen. “It’s nine-fifteen.”

“Yep.”

“When was the last time Enjolras wasn’t in by eight sharp?”

Eponine shakes her head. “The twenty-second of never.”

“Someone took April Fools’ Day seriously this year,” Bahorel mutters, taking a seat next to her. “What the fuck did I get up early for?”

He accepts the cigarette she hands him and they sit and lapse into companionable silence while smoke drifts up towards the pale blue sky in grey curlicues.

*****

“What do you mean, he’s not here?” Courfeyrac demands loudly at ten o’clock. Feuilly, who showed up ten minutes ago and is nursing a hangover, winces and pulls his cap down over his eyes.

Jehan, who has tiny white daisies spilling out of his messenger bag, busies himself handing one to each of the press employees now sitting on and around the steps—Feuilly, Bahorel, Eponine, and Joly and Bossuet. The latter two had arrived only minutes after Bahorel and are now sitting reading the newest Rolling Stone over each other’s shoulders.

“Combeferre hasn’t shown up either,” Bossuet volunteers, looking worried. It’s odd, seeing someone in purple leather pants and a t-shirt with keyhole cut-outs look worried.

“They’re fucking with us,” Bahorel says, shaking his head. “Did you get the text this morning?”

Courfeyrac makes a scoffing sound. “Like Enjolras would _actually_ give us the day off work.”

“Precisely,” Eponine says.

“How long do you think they’ll keep it up for?” Jehan asks, frowning slightly as he returns to Courf’s side and tucks the remaining daisy behind his boyfriend’s ear. “And where’s Grantaire?”

“When has Grantaire ever shown up before noon if he can help it?” Eponine asks.

“There’s no way they won’t be here by eleven,” Courfeyrac says confidently. “Even for a joke, they won’t miss half a day of work.”

*****

“He’s not _answering_ ,” Courfeyrac says in what can really only be called a whine as he looks around at the others, wearing the most distraught expression imaginable. It’s eleven-oh-two, and neither Combeferre nor Enjolras have shown up.

Neither has Grantaire, but like Eponine had pointed out, that’s nothing unusual.

“What if they’re _dead_?” Courfeyrac demands shrilly.

Eponine groans. “They’re not dead. They’re messing with us. The text, remember?”

“What if they were hit by a car on their way here to tell us that they were messing with us?” Courfeyrac counters.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened,” Feuilly says, rolling his eyes.

“When it turns out it _is_ , you’ll be sorry,” Courfeyrac mutters, tapping frantically at his phone.

“Don’t you have a key to the press?” Eponine asks Courfeyrac, leaning back on her elbows.

Courfeyrac mumbles something inaudible. Eponine and Bahorel exchange looks.

“Enjolras took it away after Valentine’s Day,” Jehan explains without looking up from his daisy chain.

*****

[text] COURFEYRAC: Combeferre?

[text] COURFEYRAC: COMBEFERRE

[text] COURFEYRAC: COMBEFERRRRRRREEE

[text] COMBEFERRE: What is it?

[text] COURFEYRAC: Oh thank God. E isn’t at press and NEITHER ARE YOU

[text] COURFEYRAC: WHERE ARE YOU?????

[text] COMBEFERRE: Home. Did you not get Enjolras’ message?

[text] COURFEYRAC: THIS ISNT FUNNY

[text] COURFEYRAC: COMBefERrrrrEEEeeE

*****

On his fifth try calling Enjolras, the editor at last picks up and Courfeyrac yelps in relief and clutches the phone. “Enjolras! Are you okay? Are you bleeding? Why aren’t you here?”

“Am I—Courfeyrac, I’m _fine_. Why wouldn’t I be? And why have you called me five times in half an hour?”

“Put it on speaker,” Eponine hisses, and kicks Courfeyrac in the ankle. He winces and glares at her, but obeys. Everyone stops what they’re doing to listen.

“You’re not here!” Courfeyrac tells Enjolras balefully. “You’re not here, and Combeferre isn’t here, and the press is _locked_.”

There’s a long pause on the other end. “Yes, I tend to lock it when I’m not there. Silly, I know.”

“But…” Courfeyrac looks at a loss. “Why aren’t you here?”

Enjolras sighs, sounding irritated. “Did you not get my message?”

“Was that…” Courfeyrac glances around at the others, who are wearing matching mystified expressions. “Was that not a joke?”

“Why would it have been a joke?” Enjolras asks slowly, as if speaking to someone very, very dim.

“Because of what today is!”

“What is today?”

“It’s April first!” At the silence from the other end of the phone line, in which is very audible an unsaid ‘…and?’ Courfeyrac huffs and says in a long-suffering way, “It’s _April Fools’ Day_ , Enjolras.”

“Have I ever given even the slightest impression that I would use the newspaper office to play a joke?” Enjolras asks. “You must be mistaking me for you.”

“ _Someone_ woke up on the wrong side of Grantaire this morning,” Courfeyrac sniffs.

“Wait,” Bossuet interjects. “Grantaire _is_ with you, isn’t he? He’s not just late?”

Enjolras coughs.

“Motherfuckers,” Bahorel mutters, shaking his head and stubbing out his latest cigarette on the steps.

“How did he get you to stay home?” Joly asks, impressed.

“Did he hide your keys?” Bossuet interjects before Enjolras can answer, looking eager.

“Did he hide all your shoes?” Jehan asks.

Everyone but Jehan stares at Courfeyrac, who flushes faintly red but only says with great dignity that sometimes drastic measures are necessary.

“Did he block the door?” Bahorel asks from the stairs.

“Did he tie you to something?” Eponine calls.

“I’ve got it,” Courfeyrac announces with great solemnity, holding up a hand so the others fall silent. “The irresistible lure of his body made it impossible to leave your bed, didn’t it?”

They can all hear the muffled laughter on the other end of the line.

“I am hanging up,” Enjolras informs Courfeyrac.

*****

“But seriously, what _did_ you do to get him to miss a day of work?” Eponine says into her phone half an hour later.

Grantaire knows without asking that she’s standing at the base of the ladder leading up to her apartment window. “Was whipped cream involved?”

Grantaire, who is sitting at Enjolras’ tiny dining room table eating dry cereal for lunch (as ever, there are no real groceries in Enjolras’ apartment) while Enjolras showers, huffs a laugh at that.

He checks to make sure he can still hear the water running in the bathroom before answering quietly, with awe evident in his voice, “I didn’t do anything. I just asked.”

“If I make a really girly _awww_ -ing sound, will you hate me?”

“I’ll allow it this once.”

Eponine _awww_ s as obnoxiously as possible for several seconds, and then sighs. “Okay, I may or may not have a James Dean wannabe to evict from my apartment, so I have to go. Just one last thing—did you tell him?”

Grantaire sucks on his spoon. “Did I tell him what?”

“Jerk,” she says, and he grins. “Did you tell him what today is?” There’s a faint screeching of metal as she pulls the ladder down.

“I did.”

“Progress,” she says approvingly.

“I’m rolling my eyes, just so you know.”

“Love you anyway,” she tells him.

“Yeah, you too.”

Just before she hangs up, she adds, “Happy birthday.”


	2. April First (Not at the A.B.C. Press)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we see how Enjolras and Grantaire spent April first.

“It’s my birthday,” Grantaire says into the quiet of the warm Monday morning. It’s been freezing the past week but the previous night was inexplicably hot, so the windows onto the street are pushed open. The faint screeching of children from the schoolyard a few buildings down drifts in, along with the scent of bread.

Enjolras lives over a bakery, which as Grantaire frequently tells him is his favorite thing about sleeping over.

(“Your favorite thing?” Enjolras had asked dryly the week before, coming out of the bathroom with water still dripping from his hair and a criminally small towel knotted around his waist. Grantaire had amended his statement to second-favorite.)

“What?” Enjolras asks, his lovely face registering surprise as he turns from his tiny closet, shrugging on a red plaid shirt. “Is it really?”

Grantaire nods without raising his head from the pillow. It’s one of his, because Enjolras has terrible pillows, but after several weeks it smells like Enjolras’ apartment, not his own. Secretly, he likes that a lot.

“Happy birthday,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire manages a smile.

“Why are you here with me?” the editor asks next. He finishes buttoning the shirt and turns to face Grantaire, his expression frankly curious.

“Don’t fish for compliments. It’s obnoxious.”

“I mean,” Enjolras says, rolling his eyes and gesturing vaguely in the direction of Boulevard St. Michel, “Why aren’t you already off wearing some ridiculous party hat and ruining everything in the press office?”

This is probably a reference to Eponine’s last birthday, which had been in December and consisted of so much alcohol and glitter confetti and balloons (purchased, of course, by Courfeyrac) that the office had resembled a particularly tasteless discotheque.

Rum had been spilled on one of the computers, Bossuet had nearly toppled off the fire escape, and Jehan, after he’d drunk far too much and fallen giggling backwards off one of the desks, had been so thoroughly covered in multicolored glitter that he looked like a faery creature for days afterwards.

Grantaire doesn’t answer. Enjolras regards him for a moment, lying in Enjolras’ bed with his hair a wreck, wearing one of Enjolras’ ancient red t-shirts. He’s just realized something which should probably have been obvious.

“Am I to assume, by the lack of Courfeyrac bursting into my apartment with cake and streamers, that this is something of privileged information?” he asks.

“Eponine knows,” Grantaire says after a moment, picking at a loose thread in the sheets. “She’s known for a couple years. I asked her not to tell anybody.”

Enjolras is tempted to ask how one might acquire the mythical power to make Eponine not tell people things when you don’t want her to. He decides it can wait. “And nobody’s ever wondered when your birthday is?”

“Have you?”

Enjolras raises one eyebrow. “No. But I’m me.”

Grantaire has to huff a laugh. Enjolras has a spectacular memory when it comes to obscure dates of Supreme Court cases for human rights violations, and perfect recall for what page and section any particularly obnoxious article in _Le Monde_ comes from, but Grantaire would be amazed if he could name a single one of his employees’ birthdays, or even recite his own phone number for that matter.

“She might’ve told them not to ask. I don’t know.”

Enjolras sits back down on the bed with him, enjoying the way the sun spilling through the window turns Grantaire’s skin golden. “Do you not want me to ask?”

“I thought you might. I wouldn’t have told you if I wasn’t prepared to answer.”

Enjolras reaches out to push fingers through the tangle of his boyfriend’s dark hair, and Grantaire makes an appreciative humming sound. The blond man waits for a moment, and then asks, “Why don’t you like your birthday?”

He doesn’t particularly care about his _own_ birthday, not since he was turning eighteen, anyway, but lack of interest in a special occasion from the man who dragged him into the kitchen at three in the morning on New Year’s and Hallmarked the office on Valentine’s Day seems significant.

“Because,” Grantaire says, and his voice is steady but his eyes slide away from Enjolras’. He clears his throat before continuing. “God, there’s really no good way to do this. It’s also the day my mom died, when I was eleven. It wasn’t…unexpected, or anything, she was sick. But I spent pretty much all of March in the hospital, and she died on the first.”

“Oh,” Enjolras says softly.

"Yeah," Grantaire says without lifting his gaze.

It might seem strange to an outside observer, that a group of friends as close as the press employees could know so many things about each other — if quizzed, everyone in the press could probably tell you what the others had eaten for breakfast on any given day — and not know things like this.

But the thing is, between Eponine’s former home life and Courfeyrac’s father and Enjolras’ parents and Feuilly’s whole childhood, family is sort of a thing they don’t talk about.

And sure, it’s not like _all_ of their parents suck—Jehan’s mother is about the sweetest woman in the world, who when she’s not having spirited talks about books over tea with Combeferre or calling Bossuet to gossip about the latest episode of such and such a show, is crocheting them all blankets and scarves and tea towels in a violent shade of fuchsia. And Combeferre’s parents are deeply kind, even if they are a bit disappointed their son opted not to pursue medical school in favor of running an independent newspaper.

But most of them don’t talk about their families, because, well, the press _is_ their family.

Enjolras withdraws his hand from Grantaire’s hair and sits back, busying himself unlacing the boots he’s only just put on. Then he lies back down with Grantaire, fully dressed, and takes the dark-haired man’s hand in his, lacing their fingers together.

He doesn’t try to pull Grantaire towards him, in case that’s not what Grantaire wants, but he needn’t have worried—as ever, Enjolras is Grantaire’s polar North and he doesn’t hesitate before tucking himself up against Enjolras’ body, resting his head on Enjolras’ chest.

“Why Eponine?” Enjolras asks, but there’s no accusation in his voice, only curiosity.

“It was the night she left home,” Grantaire answers. He closes his eyes, and Enjolras thinks that despite having just woken up he looks exhausted. “It was sort of the thing, I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about, where someone trusts you with something incredibly important. And you want to tell them something important back, so they know you trust them too?”

Enjolras nods. Grantaire traces invisible designs on the skin of Enjolras’ forearm. It’s clear he’s not done, and Enjolras just waits.

“My dad,” Grantaire says at last, as if with a great effort. Enjolras can hear how hard he’s trying for nonchalance, and it makes his chest hurt. “I don’t think he did it on purpose, but he sort of shut down. It got better after a while, but we both hated that day so much. It never really occurred to either of us to celebrate my birthday after that, because it wasn’t my birthday anymore. It was the day she died.”

His voice is thick now, and he clears his throat again. “I know I’m being ridiculous. I mean, for Christ’s sake, it was fifteen years ago.”

“You’re not ridiculous,” Enjolras tells him, and when it looks like Grantaire is going to try and brush this off the blond leans over and kisses him, which works nicely as a way of cutting off any protest. It’s a short kiss, relatively chaste, and then Grantaire settles back against Enjolras’ chest with a sigh.

Enjolras doesn’t tell him he’s sorry. That much is obvious, and he thinks he would hate how useless the word sounds in his mouth. “Tell me what I can do,” he says instead.

“You can stay in this bed with me,” Grantaire says, with a smile to make sure Enjolras knows it’s a joke. To save him from having to say “no.”

Enjolras wonders how it is that after three months Grantaire thinks he won’t notice the smile is hollow. That he won’t see how badly Grantaire wants Enjolras to stay with him, and how adamantly he’s trying to pretend it doesn’t matter.

It’s a Monday, which means that it’s important to go over assignments to make sure that everyone is on track for publication on Thursday. Monday is the day he and Combeferre go over their list of advertisers, double-checking each ad against the list of payments.

Ultimately, though, it’s not really a consideration.

Enjolras retrieves his phone from the bedside table and types out a quick message.

Grantaire makes an inquisitive sound as Enjolras sets the phone aside and pulls his shirt back off over his head, making his golden hair stick up wildly in all directions.

“What are you doing?” Grantaire asks. He holds up his own phone to display the digital clock on the screen. “You’re going to be late.”

“I’m not going in today,” Enjolras tells him with a shrug, as if it’s nothing, as if he’s ever missed a single day’s work in the press’ history, even when he had strep and he couldn’t even _talk_ (which had involved a lot of angry gesturing and rude post-its slapped onto their articles and computer screens, and Combeferre periodically forcing him to lie down on the floor behind his desk and drink water).

Grantaire only stares at him open-mouthed for a long moment, looking very much younger and more than a little bit vulnerable, then shakes his head. “Enjolras, I was _kidding_ , I’ll be fine, you don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to,” Enjolras says, his tone making clear how obvious this should be. “I want to.” He unbuttons his jeans as well, kicking them off and then pulling the sheets back over the both of them. “The press will be fine without me for one day.”

“You know, you didn’t even twitch when you said that.”

Enjolras’ lips quirk up at the edges as he tugs Grantaire closer to him, wrapping his arms around the other’s waist. The t-shirt has rucked up around his ribs, and his skin is warm. The sheets rustle as they get situated, lying on their sides, chest to chest, with their legs tangled together. “So you’re twenty-five?” Enjolras asks after a moment of peaceable silence.

“Twenty-six,” Grantaire corrects.

“Twenty-six,” Enjolras repeats thoughtfully. “That’s only five years off, now.”

Grantaire makes a deeply pained sound and claps a hand over Enjolras’ grinning mouth. “We don’t talk about that. Ever.”

Enjolras kisses the other man’s fingers before prying his hand off. His smile is absolutely _wicked_. “So this means when you were turning twenty-one, _I_ was—”

Grantaire’s anguished groan is muffled by the pillow he’s jammed over his face.


End file.
